School districts and school finance reform advocates were sandbagged by Governor Jim Doyle and the Democratic controlled Legislature. For years they had said “if you put us in control, fixing school finance will be a priority.’ We helped put them in control, districts built preliminary budgets based on the assumption that even if they wouldn’t enact a fix right away, they also wouldn’t make things worse.

Now — as districts are finalizing their budgets, setting their tax levies and raising property taxes — the teabagger anti-tax crowd is coming out. So far the only report I’ve seen is from Washburn, but more may well be on the way.

… Masterson said cutting back to what would essentially leave “reading, writing and arithmetic” would be damaging to the community. She said that as part of the referendum process, many cuts had already been made and that the district had made as many cuts as they could without cutting the quality of instruction. She said that further cuts could result in dramatically larger class sizes and might require building changes that the district couldn’t afford in any event.

“The only way you cut now is putting 40 kids in a classroom, eliminating programs, which will result in an exodus of new families and existing families from local schools,” she said. “Consumer science programs, music programs, tech ed programs — when you start cutting those kinds of things… well, today’s public education families expect a rounded education,” Masterson said.

This hasn’t changed, but now the voices from the community are louder and more strident. The Daily Press described the message from the September 1, 2009 listening session (let me note that MMSD has scheduled no listening sessions on their budget revisions):

One message came across loud and clear: The amount of the increase is unacceptable — and they expect the school board to go back to the budget and rework it so the increase is much closer to the 9 percent increase approved last November in a referendum allowing the district to exceed revenue caps. The tough economy makes a big tax increase especially difficult, many said.

…”The bottom line is we need to cut, and we need to keep Washburn houses filled with families.”

As is usual with these things, they were less forthcoming when asked for suggestions about what to cut and how to save:

Many at the meeting were unhappy they were being asked for suggestions for cuts when they didn’t have a line-item budget to look at for ideas, and others said the reason they hire an administrator and elect a school board is to make intelligent fiscal decisions on behalf of their constituents. Still, some suggestions were made.

Those included delaying improvements to the bleachers, cutting the food service program, and cutting administration costs by sharing an administrator with other school districts.

It is likely that there are some savings to be had, but after 16 years of struggling with annual cuts due to revenues that have been inadequate by design, the potential savings are minimal.

I have some sympathy with the people who are unhappy with the tax increase. They are correct that too much of the investment in education is coming from property taxes.

The ones I have no use for are the those who say –as one attendee did — they are “sick of hearing the excuse ‘the state did this to us.'”

This is both wrong — the state did do this to them — and counter productive, because it cuts off productive protest directed at the state officials who actually have the power to make things better and electoral action directed to replace the ones who sandbagged us. Getting mad at district officials over this makes no sense.